How crony capitalism is harming the economic prosperity of young Americans: College tuition up 1,140 percent since 1978 and wages are stagnant.
When you live life as a hammer, everything must appear like a nail. So when our economy is run and operated by the financial industry, everything must appear like a casino just asking for it in terms of speculation. Such is the state of affairs in a crony capitalistic system. The term gets thrown around but in reality, we do have a system that is punishing the working and middle class in favor of a small connected financially elite. The financial sector in our economy is so powerful, that the biggest financial meltdown in our generation resulted in nothing more than a hand slap and not one heartbeat was skipped on those big banking bonuses. In the meantime the middle class continues to shrink and young Americans are swimming in oceans of student debt. Many are graduating into a tough economy where the market is flooded with low wage jobs. Is this crony financial system benefitting young Americans?
The EBT recovery – Food stamp cuts impact Wal-Mart: The consequences of a low wage recovery create a larger group of Americans living food stamp to food stamp.
This recovery is the most lopsided recovery the US has faced in more than a generation. Wal-Mart recently announced a big hit to their bottom-line because of the recent cuts to the nationwide food stamp program. Over 47 million Americans now depend on food stamps to get by on a monthly basis to feed their families. In reality, these are debit cards that are automatically refilled on a monthly basis causing queues to form at some Wal-Marts on the last day of the month at midnight. This is a massive market. In fiscal year 2013 over $76 billion in food stamps were issued. This has also led to a mini renaissance in stores like Family Dollar and the 99 Cents Store. Even these low priced giants have faced tougher challenges as the nation’s poor get even poorer. There doesn’t seem to be any major retrenchment on the number of food stamp participants. How can that be if the employment figures are supposedly looking so rosy? The issue of course is that many of the new jobs have come in the form of low wage work. Many food stamp recipients are actually employed and are part of the working poor. When Wal-Mart takes a hit because of a cut in food stamp benefits you know that this recovery is barely treading water.
Why millions of Americans will never retire: How the prospect of retirement went from a realistic goal to an outrageous dream for most American families.
Retirement was presented to many Americans as some kind of middle class rite of passage. It was odd to see so many fall under the spell of easy riches and generous retirement math presented to the public from the Wall Street financing machine. Many saw retirement as a distant object so far into the future but the future is now here. The middle class is shrinking and with it the dreams of retirement. I suppose it is important to define retirement before we go on since this is a relatively new concept as far as history is concerned. In the past, you worked until you died. Short of royalty, this was the typical life path. Retirement, at least how it was presented to modern American workers, meant a time in life when financial worries were gone thanks to a lifetime of work. In more practical terms this meant a combination of a pension, 401k/403b, and Social Security. Social Security was never intended to be the main retirement income stream for Americans but it is. Pensions are now nearly extinct in this low wage economic system. Many Americans in the early 1980s were presented with the Wall Street vision of retirement where many simply set aside money in 401ks and IRAs generating untold wealth to the financial kings. Wall Street was supposed to exercise some fiduciary duty to the American people but the opposite occurred. A massive bait and switch. Retirement is going to take on an entirely new definition given the current state of wealth in America.
Is the stock market overvalued by 50 percent? PE ratios out of sync with fundamentals underlying the economy. Not in labor force group in US increased by 15 percent since recession ended.
How quickly people forget financial history. Those investing in the stock market since 2009 have grown accustomed to a market that only moves in one direction. They are also addicted to a system built off crony financial leverage that has largely locked out the vast majority of the public. This system has created wealth inequality that is now the worst we have seen during multiple generations. The stock market is massively overvalued based on multiple measures. Many use earnings as a way of measuring the actual value of a company. The PE ratio has been used over many decades as a sensible way of valuing companies. That is why today, with the PE ratio of the S&P 500 being 80 percent higher than the historical average dating back to 1870 we have to question what is driving this market higher. Certainly those with wealth, a smaller portion of the population, understand the Fed is debasing savings so people are diving deep into stocks, art, and even real estate to preserve wealth. Those that claim no inflation is imminent fail to look at the items that impact the lives of people daily. The stock market is up 164 percent from the lows reached in 2009! People are now addicted to a market juiced by easy funny money.